


Eleven Inches of Rainfall

by Mal_ice (WickedIntentions)



Category: Naruto
Genre: "The End Justifies the Means", Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Antihero!Akatsuki, Corruption, Dubious Consent, Ethics Violations, Explicit Body Gore (Corpse), F/M, Harboring Terrorists, Manipulation, Minor Character Death, Older Man/Younger Woman, Poisoning, Politics, Poverty, Power Imbalance, Sexual Tension, Totalitarian Dictatorship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-01-06 14:23:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18390182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WickedIntentions/pseuds/Mal_ice
Summary: In the totalitarian dictatorship of Konohagakure, Sakura Haruno, an impoverished medic just trying to get through the day, suffers a chance encounter with a pair of terrorists and becomes an unwilling accomplice to their leaders' plots. Under the red moon, shadows creep in from every angle.





	1. Infiltration

**Author's Note:**

> **This story deals with** a complicated, messy, and admittedly unhealthy dynamic between Sakura and her captors/liberators, Obito Uchiha and Sasori. Obito is thirty-one years old, Sasori is thirty-five years old (but looks much younger), and Sakura is twenty-two years old. Personally, I always fantasized about older men as early as my preteen years, which is why I write taboo pairings. It’s harmless fiction to me.
> 
> **Constants and variables:** My highest priority is always to stay true to the original characterizations to the best of my ability and knowledge no matter where the setting takes us. There are no shinobi, hidden villages, or jutsu in this. It’s a modern setting with cities and technology.
> 
> **The premise reads fairly lighthearted _at first._** But Sasori is a merciless killer, and, under his mask, Obito is mostly apathetic to human suffering. They will force Sakura, a law-abiding citizen and humanitarian, to go against her personal ethics and morals in their mission to dismantle Konohagakure’s entire way of life. The end justifies the means.
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

In the dead of night, Sakura Haruno, passed out on her couch in her starched medic’s uniform, was startled from her sleep by an insistent banging on her apartment door. She wiped the drool from her lips and licked them, and, after a moment of grogginess, checked the time.

Random inspections at unholy hours weren’t uncommon, especially considering the recent terrorist threats. Steep fines existed for all manner of rule-breaking, such as leaving out food or unclean dishes to draw insects. With that thought, her mind went to the unwashed fork in the kitchen sink.

Exhausted from another all-day shift at Konoha General Hospital, she hadn’t the energy to do more than pop her boxed dinner ration into the microwave and rub her aching feet in the five minutes it took to heat the rice and dry chicken. It had the consistency and flavor of sand, and she washed it down by cupping her hands under the faucet and drinking the metal-tinged water dribbling out. She vaguely remembered throwing away her trash and leaving her fork in the sink.

She could never afford a fine.

“Just a second!” she called, stumbling toward the kitchen in total darkness and fumbling for the light switch along the way. Yellow light flickered overhead. Making a mental note to wash it after her unknown visitor left, she shoved the dirty fork into its appropriate drawer.

The knocking ceased, but it picked back up with a vengeance as Sakura hurried across her living room to unlock the door.

Her reflexive apology clung to the tip of her tongue when she opened her apartment to the silhouettes crowding her doormat. She caught only a glimpse of the image of a bold red cloud circumscribed by white before someone shoved her hard enough to send her careening across the carpet. With a hiss between clenched teeth, she gripped the new burn on her arm and looked up at the intruders.

Two figures forced their way into her home and slammed the door shut behind them, locking it with an ominous click. Straw hats and black cloaks consumed their forms and any trace of their identities.

“What a dump,” uttered the shorter of the two. His masculine voice carried soft and unaffected despite the harsh words, and he tilted his head, seemingly considering the surrounding space.

In stark contrast, the taller of the two threw his gloved hands into the air in what could only be excitement. “At least we have somewhere to hide. And—oh, _look,_ this apartment comes with a pretty girl! Aren’t we lucky, Sasori?”

Sakura, struck silent with fear, jolted as the taller one stabbed a long finger in her direction. Her eyes darted between them as she inched her way backward. She pictured the knife in her utensil drawer.

“Tobi, restrain her before she tries something,” ordered the shorter one, Sasori, in a tone that oozed boredom. “I’ll investigate the other rooms.”

A short cry tore from Sakura’s throat as the taller one, Tobi, advanced on her, and she scrambled to her feet. Before she could take more than two steps, the weight of a cackling grown man tackled her and sent her to the floor once again. Squashed on her front, Sakura dug her nails into the carpet and tried to drag herself the rest of the way, but the man lying on top of her reached out to collect her wrists in one tight-fisted grip. He pinned her body down with his.

“Let go of me!” Sakura screamed before a cloth-covered forearm was shoved into her mouth. She gnashed her teeth, soaking the fabric with her saliva, but she could tell some kind of padding protected his flesh.

Meanwhile, Sasori stepped around their flailing limbs and disappeared through the doorway to her dim bedroom.

She writhed and bucked beneath Tobi, whose laughter grew stifled. In the scuffle, his straw hat flew from his head, and it rolled and hit the refrigerator. He lowered his face, and what felt like the edge of an unsanded wooden mask ground into Sakura’s cheek.

“I recommend Pretty Girl stop struggling so much,” he breathed in her ear. “Tobi is having way more fun than he should be.”

It took her a few more seconds of fighting against his unyielding form before she realized what he was referencing: a formidable erection nestled between the line of their bodies. She released a muffled shriek of protest at the discovery.

“Sorry,” he whispered. Through the haze of terror, Sakura noticed that his high-pitched voice had deepened into a smooth baritone. He knocked her teeth through her cheek with the mask when he swung his head. “I warned you.”

“She’s the only one here,” Sasori reported as he returned to the living room, “but that doesn’t necessarily mean she lives alone. Girl, do you live with anyone else?”

Sakura craned her neck to look up at him. With a mouthful of forearm, she made to shake her head in a truthful negative—but stopped just in time. She nodded instead.

“Pretty Girl is lying! She’s a liar!” Tobi sang in her ear, once again in that grating, childish way. She was sweating from the sheer amount of body heat radiating from him, and the musty smell of her carpet nauseated her. “Sakura Haruno: age twenty-two, medic at Konoha General, single. District two-five-five-seven _-zer-oh,_ class one, apartment twelve. No living family members.”

_What…?_ Sakura thought in a panic. _How does—_

“So, this wasn’t a random pick like you led me to believe.” Sasori knocked Tobi’s hat aside as he opened the refrigerator. Inside was a half-empty container of low-fat milk, a lopsided carton of eggs, and a few packages of vanilla yogurt, the latter being her snack during work. “Pitiful selection. Is there anything worth eating in this place?”

“Well, her rations comprise single-person types A and D, _sooo…”_

“That means nothing to me.”

Who were these men? The night’s events stupefied Sakura—and she was still hyper-aware of the appendage digging into her backside. Something about the situation clearly excited Tobi. Every time the man on top of her shifted his weight, it returned to her immediate attention.

With a noise of disinterest, Sasori closed the refrigerator. “I guess we’ll be staying here for a while. Security will be too tight to slip through until Leader makes the next move. I’ll try to contact him in the morning. Do you want the bed or couch?”

Tobi considered the question before chirping, “Bed, please.”

“All right, couch is all yours. I’ll leave the girl to you. Night.” Sasori turned the corner, leaving her at the mercy of his companion.

“Sasori picks the opposite of what Tobi says,” he told her conspiratorially, dragging her with him as he stood. He retrieved cloth and a length of rope from the depths of his cloak, and he gagged her and fastened the cloth with a knot behind her head. He tied her wrists together at the small of her back. “I wanted the couch. Tobi is a clever boy.”

He was far too tall for the couch, but that didn’t stop him from flopping down and bringing her with him, complete with exaggerated, “Wheee!”

_What’s going on?_ Sakura’s mind cried.

Lying on the chest of a man she didn’t know, in his arms, bound and gagged, and doused in a sickly yellow light, she endured the most miserable, bewildering, and sleepless night of her life.

* * *

* * *

Sakura’s apartment, like every other apartment in her district, contained only the essentials: a kitchen-and-living-room combination, bathroom, and bedroom. Furnishings were sparse; housing regulations didn’t allow “wall mutilations” such as hanging pictures or anything else that required a nail through the drywall, so she kept a small stack of photographs and sentimental objects in a drawer beside the refrigerator.

Other than the barebones appliances she needed to store and cook her food and a rolling island counter, she was allocated a single radio to listen to mandatory broadcasts, a digital clock, a spindly legged stool, a personal fold-out stand for eating on, and a ragged brown couch with two holes in the cushion.

A cubicle shower, toilet, and sink completed her bathroom, and a simple rectangular closet and twin-sized mattress filled out her bedroom. The sandpaper carpet, stained from previous occupants, was the color of squashed raspberries. The walls were an unobtrusive and pale gray.

It wasn’t much, but it was home, appointed to her based on her hourly wage, marital status, and family size. Fifty credits an hour, single, one female adult: These were several designations that determined her quality of living and social standing in the totalitarian dictatorship of Konohagakure.

She lived on the lower end of the spectrum, housed far away from the wealthy districts belonging to the politicians, judges, and chief executive officers—people who could be bribed to spin their cogs a certain way. Sakura, a diligent medic, vowed to save as many lives as possible no matter how much they paid her, and she wasn’t ashamed to admit it.

She didn’t have belongings. She didn’t eat delicious food. She didn’t have much space. There were no regular parties on her schedule, no galas or mixers. From seven in the morning to seven at night, she spent her time at the rundown hospital and tended to patients with rudimentary tools and medicine. She showered in the morning, simultaneously washing her dirty laundry and body, ate breakfast, and walked the thirty-minute distance to the hospital. At the end of every shift, she headed straight back to her apartment, ate dinner, and slept.

It was difficult to miss something that she never had; her childhood district, designated to low-wage families of three, was a few blocks away and only a slight upgrade to what she now had. She possessed the essentials for living and consumed a diet heavy in iron, lean proteins, and fiber.

Sakura was breathing. Her organs were functioning as intended. She was a productive member of society—and that was the most anyone like her could ask for.

Her outspoken neighbor, Naruto Uzumaki, didn’t quite agree with this sentiment.

Naruto also held an hourly wage of fifty credits, was single, and lived by himself. Since he worked the graveyard shift at Mitsuki Limited, they never encountered each other except on weekends, especially Sundays, when they collected their weekly ration allotment from the civic center.

(Mitsuki Limited was hired to deal with product issues so the companies who created and distributed them didn’t have to. “Moldy rations? Call Mitsuki Limited. Bug spray doesn’t work on that army of super cockroaches breeding in your bathtub? Call Mitsuki Limited. Broken condom? Yeah, you know the drill,” Naruto explained when Sakura first bumped into him four years ago.)

He often regaled days far before their time, when Konohagakure was a peaceful village overseen by a compassionate leader and a council of elders. Citizens took jobs based on what they wanted to do—not what they were good at—and bought and rent their own homes and apartments according to their personal tastes. The gates served as protection from the dangerous forests rather than prison bars. Tasty food was abundant and affordable.

Life had been about more than working, about being more than a machine with a single function.

“Hobbies,” Naruto enthused. “Sleeping in. Free time to do whatever the hell you want. Say and think whatever the hell you want. Can you imagine it, Sakura?”

She couldn’t.

Out of all of their neighbors, Sakura was the only one who sat through his speeches anymore. As Naruto was infamous for picking fights with their patrolling officer, nobody wanted to be seen with him.

Associating with a free-thinker was dangerous.

* * *

* * *

A six o’clock mandatory broadcast brought few answers and a lot more questions.

Sakura, having just nodded off when she wiggled her way into a more comfortable position against the back of her couch, experienced her second rude awakening when her radio lit up, blaring the militaristic cadence of the national anthem at 5:45 a.m. Jerking to awareness, she peeled her bleary eyes apart and glimpsed the orange lollipop-shaped mask that she spent half the morning studying.

Tobi groaned in protest, yanking his arm out from under her and stretching his long limbs. With an impressive yawn, he snuck a hand beneath his mask to, presumably, scratch at his face.

He had no right looking so comfortable in her apartment. Sakura glowered at him and tossed her unruly strands out of her face. Her dry mouth felt like cotton around the stiff gag. Muffled, she demanded, “Take this out of my mouth already.”

“Morning to you, too.” His sleep-roughened voice set her hair on end. He threaded his other hand through her pale-pink locks in a mock-affectionate gesture. “Sleep well? I know I did.”

She growled and pinched a nerve in her neck trying to dislodge him.

With a dark chuckle, he bucked her off, sending her crashing to the floor just as the national anthem played its last notes. While she spat an incomprehensible string of insults through her gag, he pushed himself upright and combed his spiky black hair with his fingers.

Sakura squirmed to loosen her bindings. A pair of booted feet came to a stop inches from her nose, and she rolled away so she could look up at red-haired Sasori, who had left his straw hat behind. Apathetic honey-brown eyes framed with long lashes briefly acknowledged her.

“What’s this noise?” Sasori asked, sounding too bored to care about the answer. He leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms.

Tobi picked up the radio beside the couch and examined it at length, toying with the dials and buttons. “Tobi thinks it’s an HL859 with strict permission modifications. Can’t turn it off. It has one available frequency and preset volume.”

“What’s the frequency?”

“FM 101.8.”

“We tried that one.” Sasori wandered the length of the living room. “They must have RF shielding in the city walls, but I think I know where we can break through. Can you reverse the modifications?”

By way of a response, Tobi retrieved a small toolkit from the arsenal hiding under his cloak and crossed his legs. He took the radio apart with no small amount of enthusiasm.

While the two men were occupied, Sakura wormed across the carpet to her kitchen. Her cheek touched cool linoleum, and she angled herself so that her knees were underneath her. She pushed herself onto her feet but remained crouched as she neared her utensil drawer. Raising her chin, she hooked it over the handle and eased the drawer open until it was ajar enough for her to access the contents.

Flexing her burning shins to the sound of her popping joints, she straightened up and lowered her mouth to the waiting knife handle.

The drawer slammed shut a hair’s breadth from Sakura’s lips, and she choked on her cry. A hand grasped her upper arm and yanked her upright, bringing her face to face with Sasori’s pale countenance. With lidded eyes and a cruel half-smile plastered across his strangely angelic features, he made for a frightening sight. Their similar height didn’t even register.

“You’re irritating,” he told her. “Why can’t you behave?”

“Tobi thinks she wants her gag taken out,” Tobi called from the couch. “Pretty Girl is probably thirsty!”

“Is that right?”

Sakura met Sasori’s eyes and, after a beat of hesitation, nodded. He shoved her back against the kitchen sink, snagging a fistful of her uniform, and she tensed in fear, holding her breath as he crowded her space.

“Do you know the punishment for harboring terrorists in Konoha?” Sasori asked.

“Interrogation, torture!” Tobi sang, brandishing a tiny hex-head screwdriver in her direction. “Public dismemberment, execution!”

“In case it’s unclear, we belong to a terrorist organization.” He bore holes into her with the intensity of his stare. “If you tell anyone about us, you’ll only hurt yourself. We’ll disappear long before the police arrive, and your government will make your life hell. Got it?”

Sakura furrowed her brow and nodded again, and Sasori leaned in closer, bringing the subtle scent of pine. He found the knot behind her head and unraveled it, pulling the gag from her mouth. She licked her cracked lips to find relief, but it did little to soothe the pain without moisture.

He reached down, brushing across her tense outer thigh, and yanked the utensil drawer open. He withdrew the coveted knife and held it aloft. “Let’s make something clear, Haruno: You won’t overpower us. If you hit us, we’ll hit back. I don’t care if you’re a woman. Tobi doesn’t care if you’re a woman. If we tell you to do something, you do it that very _instant.”_

Sick with dread, Sakura flicked her eyes from the sharp blade to his serene face.

“Follow this simple instruction, and, when it’s all over, you’ll get a prize: your pointlessly fleeting life. Understand?”

“I understand,” she croaked. Sasori spun her around and shoved her forward. He grabbed her arm, wedged the knife between her wrists, and sawed the rope apart. She turned on the sink and downed handfuls of the metallic water until she choked on it.

Just as Tobi finished rewiring the radio and screwing the front back on, a rusty voice crackled from the speakers:

“Greetings, citizens of glorious Konohagakure, on this Tuesday morning. First of all, there’s reason to believe our city has been breached by the ‘Akatsuki,’ a negligible band of terrorists. This is not a cause for panic—I repeat: This is _not_ a cause for panic. If you see or hear something suspicious, we advise every citizen to do their duty and report it to the nearest civic center or officer. Otherwise, it’s business as usual.”

“Don’t panic!” Tobi set the radio aside and danced through the living room, performing a flawless pirouette that flared his cloak out around him. He ducked out of sight through the bedroom door.

“In other news…” the voice droned on.

“Haruno, who’s speaking right now?” Sasori helped himself to one of her vanilla yogurts after finding a spoon. He did well to ignore both his partner’s antics and the glare she sent his way.

“Um, it sounds like Takahiro Nakagawa, Chief of Security,” Sakura mumbled. “He’s done most of the broadcasts lately.”

“Hm. I wonder why.” He cocked his head at her and offered a mean smile when she bristled at him. Popping a spoonful of yogurt in his mouth, he took a seat on the nearby stool and spun around once.

“I need to get ready for work.” As she headed for her bedroom with a cautious shuffle, she monitored his reaction. He didn’t even twitch in her direction, seemingly too preoccupied with gorging himself on her snack.

“Sounds like you have to wait for Tobi to finish up, then.” The distinctive sound of running water punctuated Sasori’s words.

“Hey!” An outraged Sakura flew across the bedroom to pound on the bathroom door. _“Excuse me,_ I have very limited hot water! You can’t just—”

Tobi poked his head out, releasing a cloud of steam and affording a minute glance of pale skin stretched over defined musculature. He had taken off his mask. The door concealed the right half of his face. An onyx-black eye under shaggy hair stared her down. His mouth twisted into a smile. “Do you want to share?”

Rumpled, unshowered, exhausted, paranoid, and furious—Sakura began the thirty-minute trek to Konoha General Hospital.


	2. Conspiracy

Sakura reached into the icebox above her refrigerator for a prepackaged box of baked tilapia with lentil and tofu. Unlike yesterday’s chicken, the baked tilapia had flavor, so she saved it for her more trying days.

Today was one such day.

The communal coffee pot at the hospital carried her through the morning, but the caffeine had no effect when she started falling into at least two micro-naps per hour. Having dozed off on her feet, she relied on her body to jerk her mind back to awareness—albeit violently enough to alert her coworkers to the fact that she hadn’t slept.

It didn’t take long for the news to reach the dual-appointed hospital president and head of surgery, Tsunade, a stern elder woman from the wealthy Senju clan. Being a member of an upstanding family, she had her choice of workplaces but devoted her energy to Konoha General Hospital instead of the more renowned Konoha Medical Center across the city partition.

(It was only because of Tsunade’s influence that they snagged an EKG machine and hematocrit centrifuge. Konoha General celebrated accurate diagnoses eighty-three percent of the time, which was great considering its primitive functionality, _but—_ that was only half the battle. Incisions for most major operations still exceeded sixteen centimeters and kept the patient in recovery for up to two months. Sakura crossed her fingers for a robot-assisted surgical system, tissue adhesives, and expanded pharmacy in the next five years. Thinking about it made her stupidly giddy, like the anticipation of massaging her feet after a long day.)

A fatigued medic was more of a liability than anything else. Reassigned to file-sorting duty in the back room, Sakura lost her patient to her well-rested rival, Ino Yamanaka. _Tick, tick_ went the clock and her tightly clenched jaw.

Sorting files proved to be a mundane task comprising word recognition and little else, so Sakura’s idle mind wandered to the two men occupying her residence. She hoped they contacted their leader and moved on before she got home, but, if they hadn’t…

What was she going to do if they hadn’t? She counted three pressing issues right off the top of her head. First, her last inspection was two months ago, so it was only a matter of time before her next one. Second, rations were called “rations” for a reason: The government said she needed enough food to feed one adult—not three. Finally, she couldn’t maintain her peace of mind while living in seven hundred square feet with two strangers who ate her food and kept her awake all night.

Even if Sasori and Tobi weren’t discovered in her apartment, somebody _would_ notice her flagging health. After four years of monotony, working around the same people, the tiniest deviations were obvious; Yamanaka knew when she was menstruating just by glancing at her.

The whole situation seemed surreal. Sakura was in danger, but she couldn’t tell anyone. There was no help other than what she could do for herself. It hadn’t sunken in until now that she harbored terrorists in her apartment and that, out of everyone in the district—in the city, even—she was their target.

Unbidden, snippets of a past conversation with Naruto floated to the forefront of her mind.

“Look at the walls, Sakura,” he said, turning her by the shoulder so she could follow the trajectory of his finger. Towering high above the roofs of the apartment complexes and power lines were thick barricades of steel-gray. A mighty forest was said to encompass their city, hence the name, but there was no way to see the trees without passing through the gates. “When you look at the sky, they’re the first thing you see. Does that make you feel safe?”

“It makes me feel like there’s nothing out there. In here, Konohagakure _is_ the world.” Sakura lifted her eyes, tilting her head back so she could see the clouds hovering overhead. She spun on her heel, tracing the circumference of the wall until she ended back at Naruto’s vivid blue gaze, a scant seven seconds later. “It’s like you can cup your hands together and hold all of it in your palms.”

“That’s only because they never let us out. We’re told the danger’s out there. Hell, they could tell us anything they want; we’d never know the difference. But what if… what if it’s in here?”

Maybe it was an elaborate test. Maybe she wasn’t the only one taking it. The Akatsuki was a fictional element, the men in her apartment actors, the anti-terrorism broadcasts staged. It was all a ruse. If it was a test of her patriotism, she was failing by staying silent.

Maybe Naruto was right.

_Interrogation, torture! Public dismemberment, execution!_ a mental voice reminded her.

Sakura gave a little shudder, blinking back to the present, where Tobi had taken apart her microwave “to see if he could make any modifications” and Sasori smirked his way through her very personal diary. She could see why they were partners; together, they made a devastating impact.

“Interesting. Are you always this sickeningly optimistic, or is it a lie you keep telling yourself?” Sasori asked, indicating the page he was reading. When he lifted his head, the judgment danced in his eyes. “Have you heard of semantic saturation? In time, even you won’t be able to make sense of what’s written here.”

“This is my life,” Sakura said, holding back her temper. She clutched the box of frozen tilapia to her chest. “I’m making the most out of what I’m given.”

“Naive.” He tilted his head, fluttering his lashes. “Foolish. You have no idea what’s really out there, do you? If you did, you would never settle for these subhuman conditions you call ‘life.’ But fear not; that’s why we’re here.”

She ignored him and turned her attention to the sink, piled with dishes in her absence. Everywhere she looked, the intruders impeded her schedule. “Can’t you guys wash your own dishes? _And stop eating my food!”_

* * *

* * *

“Tobi thinks they’ll notice.”

“Then we’ll dispose of it elsewhere. Maybe that facility across the bridge.”

“Ooh, tricky—just how Tobi likes it. We’ll need biohazard bags and forged labels from the hospital. They also have a log and video feed. What did Itachi say about Nakagawa?”

“Hirose’s Lotus in Eternal Bloom, 1911. Nothing says ‘paranoid’ like a century-sealed bottle.”

“Aww, really? Man, what a waste!”

“There will be others. Anyway, I expect to be back in a few hours, but it depends on how long it takes to clean up and find somewhere to keep it from spoiling. Set an alarm for ten, but don’t bother waiting past midnight. I’ll rattle the doorknob twice before I knock.”

“Okie dokie. Have fun!”

Sakura, dressed in her cotton button-down pajama shirt and lounge pants and in the midst of cleaning her work uniform in the kitchen sink—after washing the dishes, including her dirty fork from when all of this began, one hundred years ago—had been eavesdropping on what sounded like the continuation of a previous conversation. Making no sense of it, she watched as Sasori donned his straw hat and headed for the door.

“Not very inconspicuous,” she criticized under her breath. “Yeah, great plan.”

Tobi, kneeling on the kitchen floor at her feet and reassembling her microwave, snickered at her comment.

The object of her consternation paused. “What was that, Haruno?”

“Nothing.”

“I thought so.” Sasori glanced over his shoulder at her from under the wide brim of his hat. “Listen, while I’m gone, why don’t you work on your attitude?”

Sakura stopped scrubbing her uniform. “Excuse me?”

“I’m saying you should learn to be grateful to us. Here we are, tirelessly working to free your city from its tyranny, but it almost sounds like you would prefer to keep things the same as they are now. Am I wrong about that?”

“I don’t… That’s not—” Sakura closed her mouth with a click of her teeth, too flustered to spit out a complete sentence. What she _wanted_ to point out was that she wasn’t obligated to provide hospitality to criminals. But her tongue betrayed her; all she could do was glower and hope it conveyed the sentiment.

_Conspiracy,_ came that voice of doubt. But since when did she assign value to anything Naruto Uzumaki said? It quieted as quickly as it came.

“Right. Keep working on it.” With a little flourish of his hand in farewell, Sasori unlocked the apartment door and disappeared into the night.

Sakura slammed a fist down on the counter. Exhaling, she rinsed the soapy white fabric in her hands and wrung it out.

“It’s just you and Tobi now,” Tobi said in her ear, making her flinch. “What would Pretty Girl like to do to pass the time?”

“Drop the ridiculous act. You don’t need to pretend around me.” She spun around to face him, finding that he had sidled up behind her during her inattention. She kept track of his hands, prostrate at his sides. “And stop calling me that. I’m Sakura. Or ‘Haruno.’”

“Who said Tobi is pretending?” He leaned forward and curled his fingers over his mask, peering out of his single eyehole at her. Unlike Sasori, he towered a head over her. His other hand came to a rest on the counter beside her, trapping her in place. “Maybe I’m fucking insane.”

Disturbed by his candor, Sakura ended the short-lived conversation by ducking under his arm and hurrying to her bathroom to hang her dripping uniform over the shower door. She had a few more articles to wash and finished the job at the bathroom sink, spreading her white undershirt, panties, and bra over the towel bar. After using the toilet, washing her face and hair in the sink, and mentally preparing herself, she flicked off the light and stepped into the bedroom.

“Tell me, Sakura,” Tobi cajoled from the direction of her bed, startling her. Under the dim column of yellow streaming in from the living room through the cracked door, he propped himself up with her pillow. His booted feet, crossed at the ankles, hung over the bottom edge of the mattress. “Have you ever listened to music?”

“Music? You mean… the national anthem?”

“Hn. Not quite.” Tobi drew her attention to the radio sitting on his lap. He spun the dial like he was searching for something specific, and static crackled out until he landed on a clear frequency. Smooth notes drifted out, accompanied by the _ting-ting ting-ting_ of a languid beat heralding a woman’s lilting voice, and he turned up the volume. “I mean _music.”_

Falling silent, Sakura held her breath and listened to the song with greedy ears. The woman sang of bitterness and shame, of both love and time lost, and the music reminded her of dripping summer heat and the dark chocolate she once tasted as a child. The swanky melody had her tapping her fingers against her thigh without realizing that she was doing it.

“Oh,” she breathed. “It’s nice…”

“Are you familiar with dancing?”

“I understand the concept. Erm… what, you want to dance… with me?”

Tobi laughed at her and snuck his forearms behind his head. “No. I want you to dance _for_ me.”

Sakura blushed. He enunciated each syllable as seductively as the woman sang her heartbreak. Even his laughter rumbled far too invitingly to annoy her. When he wasn’t mocking her with his fake voice or reminding her of the hopelessness of her situation, she found him… somewhat approachable.

The music was a beautiful and thoughtful gift. She would be lying to herself if she said it didn’t touch her, law-breaking aside, as it was illegal to tamper with the radio. As she listened to it, a stab of bitterness entered her heart. What else was barred to her? Why was it barred to her? It didn’t seem fair.

She chided herself for lingering on those sorts of thoughts. When Tobi and Sasori left, she would have to learn to live without distracting, beautiful things. Their goal, greatly ambitious, wasn’t one she thought they could reach.

“So, how long are you staying here?” she asked, clearing her throat. Tobi, while an insufferable tease, afforded easier conversation between the two of them.

“A day, a week, a month—who knows?” He shrugged his shoulders, unconcerned about his uncertain future. She looked on in disbelief. “We’ll be gone when Leader says we’re done. Preferably when your government falls to its knees.”

Assuaged by his willingness to speak, Sakura lowered herself to sit on the bed beside his feet. His boot nudged her. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to share your plans with me.”

“Normally, my lips are sealed. But I’d be hard-pressed to object if you pried them open…” he trailed off. “How badly do you want to know?”

Sakura ducked behind her damp hair, unaccustomed to such blatant flirting. The song had ended, making way for a new one, low and intimate, and the notes drifted between them. “Why are you doing this?”

“Why else?” Tobi unclasped his mask and slid it off. Splaying his hand against the right side of his face, he hid it in shadow. “I’m interested.”

Shivering, Sakura eyed his pale skin and the sharp line of his jaw as he tilted it upward. She wondered why he wouldn’t show the other half of his face to her but chose not to press the issue. “Is that why you broke into my apartment?”

He smiled. “We’ve met.”

“What?” Her lips parted in shock. Searching her memory yielded no results; she didn’t recognize him. “You’re from Konoha?”

Tobi hummed, neither confirming nor denying.

“Then… is Sasori from here?”

“I don’t know. In our organization, we don’t share details about ourselves—hometowns, interests, families. That said, I trust Sasori as my partner. Our goal is the same. As long as we focus on that, there’s no reason to worry about the other’s intentions.”

“Well, if you weren’t from Konoha, you wouldn’t care what happens to it, right?”

“Not necessarily. Your dictatorship harms relations and trade with the other great cities. Konoha’s population and resources are vast, and it’s picking favorites and assuring future destruction by reaching out to other corrupt individuals across borders. Wealth is being wasted, recycling among the rich and increasing your leader’s power to threatening proportions. Simply put, it’s becoming a problem.”

Then he tacked on, “The Akatsuki isn’t devoid of empathy; we strive to make the world better for everyone, including the oppressed, like you.”

“…Ambitious.”

“Aren’t we? We’ll start with Konoha and see where it goes.”

Affected by his charming grin, Sakura looked to her antsy hands. They sat in companionable silence, broken only by music and her picking at her nails. She wished she could remember who he was and where she had met him. The only possibility she could fathom was that gala held by the Uchiha family a few years ago, but—

The sound of shifting cloth and a dip in the mattress interrupted that tangent. She looked up and noticed that Tobi had set the radio on the floor beside the bed. He regarded her with a strange intensity, reclining on one arm.

“Come here, Sakura,” he said.

She scooted up, leaving a few polite inches between them, for that was all she could spare on her twin-sized mattress.

Still partially covering his face, he reached out and captured one of her wrists, bringing her closer with an abrupt jerk. She caught her balance before she crashed across his cloak-clad chest.

“Undress me.”

With widened eyes, she twisted around to gawk at him. _“What?”_

“You don’t really want to sit here doing nothing all night, do you? How dull. We could pass an hour without even thinking about it. Or more… depending on how good it feels.”

Sakura’s face reddened, and her breathing grew short and erratic. The lewd insinuation tingled its way down her spine, flicking each vertebra like a cold, merciless fingertip. Was this really the same guy who sometimes spoke in third-person and acted like an overgrown child squealing and smashing his toys together? And, supposedly, she had already met him.

“I won’t hurt you,” Tobi promised with a simper, “unless you think you’ll like it. I’ll make it memorable either way.”

This was a feeling she had never experienced so intensely before. She froze, unsure of how to process the liquid heat pooling in her body. She couldn’t unstick her tongue to speak. He tugged her wrist once again, and a hand settled on her thigh, guiding her to kneel astride him. His abdominal muscles twitched beneath her weight.

When Tobi sat up, she slid down into his lap. Into her neck, he whispered, “How do you want it?”

His hand fell away from his face as he kissed his way up to her ear. Soft lips, moistened with a swipe of an impatient tongue, left raised hairs and gooseflesh in their wake. Hands commanded her hips, and teeth closed around her earlobe. His fingers dipped under her lounge pants to circle her prominent hip bones. Pulled impossibly close, she was compelled to straddle his erection.

Sakura swayed with a pang of dizziness and dropped her forehead to his shoulder to regain her equilibrium. She felt like she was cowering on a clear-glass floor, looking down at Konoha and all the specks contained within its walls. Too high, too fast—what should she do? “It’s… it’s too much. It’s too hot. Please, Tobi…”

Thankfully, Tobi seemed to understand. He raised a hand to card it through her pastel-pink locks. “Do I turn you on that much? I’m flattered.”

“This is new to me,” she admitted with wobbling lips. “Music… sex. I—I don’t know what to do.”

“Sasori’s right; you have no idea what you’re missing out on.” Tobi allowed her to escape his lap. She looked away from the unabashed tent in his dark pants, where the line of his cloak parted. It seemed like she was destined to be reminded of his virility. “There’s more to life than walls and schedules.”

Sakura didn’t argue.

Later, once she had time to calm down, she warmed her dinner and found that her microwave no longer nuked a hole through one specific spot. It heated everything evenly, resulting in a delicate, moist fragrance. She held her tongue when Tobi, flicking his mask aside with a quirked mouth, stole a bite of her tilapia and licked the lemon residue from his fingers.

Gratitude swelled within her—but not because Sasori told her to feel it.


	3. An Efficient Pair

Just before eleven o’clock, Sasori rattled the doorknob twice and knocked. Seconds later, the door cracked open for him, and he pushed inside following a quick check for any onlookers. As he anticipated, Tobi was alert, dressed, and waiting for him.

Back-lit by a spill of moonlight, Sasori brushed past him. “You’re up. Three hours.”

“Ha! Why don’t I turn myself in while I’m at it?” Tobi stage-whispered. “Time me. Make Tobi sleep outside in the cold if he’s even _a second_ later than midnight.”

“If you insist.”

Sasori wasn’t going to time him; they both knew he’d be back with a minute to spare. It was a dark joke between them, an allusion to their most dangerous mission.

Almost a year ago, rumors of a planned assassination of Amegakure’s regent-kage led to the subterranean anarchist syndicate Shura. It became the Akatsuki’s most critical and time-sensitive mission, and Leader trusted no one else for the job.

(“Ughhhh, I _guess,”_ Tobi had sighed in a big show of reluctance and attitude, wringing vexation from Deidara, Hidan, and the others. They thought him an incompetent moron, some kind of comedic relief that appeared out of nowhere and no one cared enough to remove. Sasori knew better—Tobi never half-assed anything. He suspected Leader knew that, too, which was why he picked him as his partner.)

It was impossible to send out reports underground, so they memorized the pertinent details through repetition and mnemonics. Their undercover observations brought a wealth of information, particularly that the assassination would herald the capture and death of the hot-headed Raikage’s adopted brother—a calculated move to pit the world’s two greatest military forces and their respective allies against each other in a war without compromise.

While Sasori and Tobi dug into the operation for fact-checking, they took turns assuming a single shared identity under a cowl. When one of them came back to the apartment to eat and sleep, the other left to continue working. Unbeknownst to them at the time, a vigilante group learned about the plot and infiltrated Shura to do its own investigation. The parade of new faces and questions gave way to suspicions of a breach. Without warning, explosives buried the exits, and the city flooded with a nerve agent.

An hour before the detonation, Sasori allowed Tobi a deadline of three hours on his excursion so they could compare the last of their findings and head back to the Akatsuki. Four days and six hours loomed before the assassination. Tobi returned to the apartment in time to sling him over his shoulder, plow through the toxic gas and panicked masses, and escape through a cave system he accidentally discovered while hiding the corpse of someone who had threatened to oust him as an impostor—his only mistake and the reason they survived.

Tobi could’ve abandoned him, left Shura behind unscathed, and claimed all the credit. He was already at the cave when the attack began. But he backtracked for Sasori, little more than a stranger.

They endured the arduous trek back to Leader, a literal race against time while their flesh seared and lungs spasmed with poison—while the skin of their feet rubbed off with every step and infection set in. They didn’t sleep for three straight days. Sasori coughed up syrupy handfuls of blood in sporadic fits for a month and a half afterward. To this day, he still struggled to catch his breath in thick vapors or smog.

Shura’s leaders thought they killed all the spies and moved ahead as scheduled. The Akatsuki’s intervention took them by surprise and stamped out the dregs of their existence. The Raikage’s brother went unharmed and unaware of the designs on his death, and Amegakure remained none the wiser about the force that plotted against its beloved figurehead. The world inhaled and exhaled through the whole affair, business as usual.

After the mission, Sasori recognized Leader’s fixation on Amegakure for what it was—a weakness. He had appointed his childhood friend Nagato as regent-kage in his stead. The assassination attempt was more than the precursor to calamity; it was personal.

Nagato paid the two of them a handsome fee off the books and awarded dual citizenship in the guise of asylum from Konohagakure under false names. Deidara and Hidan never said another word against Tobi, who, if possible, grew more insouciant, like he witnessed the end and couldn’t be bothered anymore.

Ridiculous persona aside, Tobi proved dependable even in a life-or-death situation, which made him an invaluable partner. Sasori never needed to micromanage him or force him to do his part—a rarity in a world running on machines and human laziness. From that mission and on, their work ethic and precision solidified them as an efficient pair, perfect for delving into enemy territory like a scalpel through a diseased epidermis.

As he headed for the bedroom, he heard the door close and automatically lock behind him, signaling his partner’s swift departure and throwing him into darkness. He approached where he knew the bed was and shed his cloak. Lying down, he jostled another body with his hip. Haruno shot upright, and he used the extra space to stretch out on his back. He slid a forearm under the pillow and closed his fatigued eyes.

She gulped in quick breaths, clearly disoriented, and her hand landed on the center of his chest before recoiling just as quickly. “What are you—”

“—Go sleep on the couch.”

“This is _my_ bed.”

“Yes, I’m aware.”

Haruno scoffed, and the mattress shifted. The sound of her scratching—at her scalp, arm, or whatever else—was loud in the small space. She seemed to realize the same and stopped. After a few moments, a slide of cloth preceded a resigned exhale.

Sasori’s brow twitched. Was she incapable of sitting still?

“Where’s Tobi?” she asked.

“Out. Don’t worry about him.”

“Is it related to what you were talking about earlier? Something about… biohazard bags and video feed?”

He grunted in annoyance and turned on his side away from her. Her voice grated on his ears, sensitive from hours of cacophony from hundreds of people. “You ask too many questions. Must’ve driven Tobi insane having to babysit you all evening.”

“If you’d give me some answers, maybe I wouldn’t have so many questions.”

“We both know that’s not true.”

Haruno huffed and gritted her teeth hard enough to make a telltale grinding noise. He sensed she wanted to hit him with something but knew she wouldn’t. Someone content with life as a cog couldn’t fathom breaking free of that peaceful turning, not when she fit so well with the other pieces. Violence wasn’t programmed into her—obedience was. In time, this intrusion would become her new normal; he’d be sure of it. He was comfortable enough in his assessment to show his back.

“I’m a light sleeper,” came his warning. It didn’t hurt to keep her in line with threats, even if he wasn’t planning on sleeping until Tobi’s return and didn’t care if she stayed in the bed with him.

She fell silent.

Sasori released a slow breath and sifted through the day’s events. He recalled Itachi’s words about the relationship between the Hokage and his subordinates. “An abused dog cowers on and off its leash,” he said during their brief rendezvous tonight. It was a point of contention in the Akatsuki: Some thought the department heads were malleable enough for their purposes, while others believed it was better to wipe the slate clean of all corruption and start fresh.

He wasn’t a poisons expert because he dealt in mercy. Itachi, a killer like any other, was still capable of far more compassion than he was. Their jobs together, while executed with near-perfection, were sparse, and they incited just a little more mutual loathing each time.

_An organization that can’t trust itself splinters bit by bit from the inside out,_ Sasori thought, shifting his position on the bed with a whisper of cloth. It was the same for all people, including the ones who thought they were amalgamated in their ideals. It wasn’t difficult to predict the future of the Akatsuki. Time destroyed everything, even the intangible.

His bet was on Orochimaru being the catalyst.

Haruno sighed, breaking him from his musings. “Look, we don’t have to snap at each other every single conversation. I know I haven’t been the greatest host—but can you blame me? I don’t want to make living together more miserable than it already is, so… I’d like to explain myself.”

Sometimes, even a cog had pride when it recognized how well it did its job. Sasori suspected a mental battle took place for her to humble herself, and he suppressed the scathing response that jumped to his tongue. He’d bite, just this once.

“I… I’m not always happy. You read my diary—you think I’m fine living this way. But, when you’re trapped at the bottom of a pit, do you say, ‘I’ll never get out,’ and, ‘Everything is hopeless’? Do you give up? No, of course not. Why would you make things worse for yourself unless you enjoy the suffering?”

The mattress creaked in response.

“It’s amazing what we can put up with,” she continued. “I live in a box and eat tasteless food. I have no rights or privacy. I can’t even listen to _music_ unless someone gives me permission. But I… As long as I have a purpose, I have the motivation to stay healthy. People rely on me at the hospital. They want to see me—and, maybe, that what gets them out of bed. I think we’re all trying to survive without losing our sanity.”

Sasori waited, saying nothing, and the seconds dragged on. Was she looking for validation?

“…Sasori, are you still awake?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“My diary sounds optimistic to you, but it’s a space I made for myself. I don’t know where you come from or how you were brought up. It’s probably stupid to you, but, when nothing’s truly yours—” She cut herself off with a choked sound. “When nothing’s yours, you want to be a little selfish sometimes. So, yeah, I tell myself it’ll be okay even if it won’t be.”

He turned over onto his back. In the pitch-black, he couldn’t see her, but he detected the dip of the mattress inches away from his arm. If she meant to make him feel something with her little pity speech, it didn’t work.

Sasori never made his problems into problems for other people. He neither complained nor acquiesced. He didn’t _settle._ If he disliked something, he fixed it—or abandoned it. As strong as Haruno made herself and the people of Konoha out to be for surviving their daily struggles with their sense of self intact, they didn’t have the strength to say, “This isn’t okay,” and that alone made him feel nothing. This was a job, not salvation. The Akatsuki wasn’t rescuing them; it worked in its own interests.

Earlier, Itachi told him, “You’re a monster,” for using lethal poison instead of the benign strain he said he’d use. A medically induced coma became death in one nonchalant tip of his hand.

_‘Benign’ poison? Don’t make me laugh._

Itachi was correct, but Sasori was a monster who hunted other monsters—and he hunted them to goddamn extinction. He had an excuse for doing what he did. What was Konoha’s? What was Shura’s?

“So little faith in us,” he drawled. Showing his back was as vulnerable as he’d ever be around her, and he owed her nothing. “Working hard on that attitude, I see.”

Haruno uttered a halfhearted chuckle instead of crying—and he knew she wanted to. He grudgingly commended her thick skin.

* * *

* * *

District surveillance comprised grids of five by ten in fifty crossroads for each monograph of the Japanese alphabets, excluding “n,” but five of them were permanently dark, corresponding with the nonexistent and obsolete sounds in the first _gojūon._ Each isolated mainframe could barely handle recording and transmitting from forty-five locations at all hours of every day, and—together? There were well over twenty-two hundred cameras and two hundred computers going at once. Theoretically, one little surge could darken entire districts and wipe out everyone’s electricity, but the Department of Infrastructure maintained a maximum threshold of thirty amps on everyone's power usage to prevent this.

In a subsequent district, the _gojūon_ shifted back one, meaning each dark zone was in a different spot each time. The maintenance hatches, dotting the city, always opened in the same place. Haruno’s district of 25570 broke down into the second grid, fifty-five apartments, and seventy residents. The hospital was located in District 114066, meaning the _gojūon_ shifted ten times. “Hi,” “he,” “yi,” “yu,” and “ye” were the dark zones there. There was a hatch in “yi,” and he could—

Obito enjoyed puzzles, but this was one he solved years ago. Pulling his arms through the sleeves of his cloak, he let the voluminous black cloth hang limp at his sides as he tucked his hands into his pockets for warmth. He ambled through the maintenance tunnel and eyed the signs at each crossroad. There was a hand-drawn map in his pocket, but he preferred to challenge his memory.

District 43251 became 56565 and then 64082, and his nose went blind to the metallic scent from the rusted pipes running lengthwise across the walls and hooking around corners. Moisture oozed in slimy trails, and the fluorescent bulbs shuddered with the flickering electric currents.

At “mu” in District 81426, his ears perked at the noise reverberating down the tunnel, and he took a right in detour and veered back on track on “ru.” His steps landed soundlessly on the metal grating.

“I don’t know what to do, man,” came one of the bodiless voices. “I’ve had that ant infestation for two days, and the spray isn’t doing anything. Waste of money.”

“I’m telling you—call Mitsuki Limited,” replied the other one. They were growing more distant as they moved in the opposite direction. “You get home about five o’clock, right? Ask for Naruto Uzumaki. He’ll get you a refund, no questions asked.”

“All right. But, if Officer Uchiha shows up, I’m fucked. That’s strike three.”

“Got apple vinegar? Water and soap? Don’t default to chemicals for every problem. Look, all you gotta do is…”

Their footsteps echoed fainter and fainter until they disappeared. Obito whistled a nonsensical tune to fill the silence and encountered no one the rest of the way. At the sign for “yi” in District 114066, he wiggled his arms back through his sleeves, grabbed the rungs of the ladder, and swung himself up. Coming upon the lever at the top, he shoved at it until it gave, releasing the rusty mechanism. Cool night air trickled through the opening.

Streetlights illuminated the roads with cones of yellow, and he flicked his hat to peer over the rim of the hatch through his single eyehole. Konoha General Hospital rose out of the darkness to the north. At the lobby entrance, a camera aimed through the glass doors at a drowsy male desk attendant.

Obito checked his watch. Twenty-three minutes in the tunnel, fourteen minutes to get in and out. There was no time to waste. Slinking out, he groped for a nearby rock shard and placed it on the rim. He let the hatch close inch by inch until it settled on the rock, barely cracked open for his return.

Satisfied, he darted for the shrubs lining the hospital exterior and melded with the darkness. Around the side, a vent cover screwed into a frame. He made short work of it with his screwdriver, slid down the shaft, and landed in what appeared to be a laundry room with rows of industrial-sized washers and dryers. A pair of them rumbled in irregular cadences and masked his steps. Along the way, he turned dials to random cycles and smashed them down, and each unit came to life in his wake. By the time he reached the door, the room blinked into silent darkness.

Two minutes, his watch informed him.

Half of the first floor was dark, bathed in faint red from the emergency lights, and he followed the signs to the administrative office on the opposite end of the hospital. When footsteps clamored down the stairwell ahead of him, he dipped into an open examination room. Squinting through the dim, he found the wall-bolted receptacle for biohazard bags and pulled out five of them as a trio of nurses breezed past the doorway.

“I bet Soshi was running too many washers and dryers again.”

“What does he expect? This isn’t Konoha Medical Center!”

Humming to himself, Obito made to turn away and paused in mid-step.

_One, two, three, four limbs. One head. Heart, lungs, stomach, small intestine, large intestine—_

He ran out of fingers to count on and shrugged, unscrewing the receptacle and emptying its contents. After securing it back into place, he found a box of heavy-duty trash bags under the sink, broke the perforation line with a jab, and yanked one out. A couple tosses later, he dumped his burden into the inflated bag and heaved it over his shoulder like an oversized knapsack.

Five minutes.

He sank behind an empty cart when he came upon an elderly man flicking switches on the circuit board, to no avail.

“Must’ve blown a fuse,” he muttered to himself, closing the breaker with a snap. “Where’s that box?”

Obito pushed himself upright with a creak of his knees and shadowed him. When the man disappeared into a storage closet, he continued down the hallway and arrived at the cluttered administrative office. He kicked the garbage bag under the desk housing the desktop computer, sat in the chair, and jiggled the mouse to wake it up.

He patted himself down, zeroing in on one pocket sewn to the interior of his cloak. Undoing the clasps down the front, he reached inside and retrieved a USB flash drive, which he plugged into the tower. For the on-screen prompt, he typed in several lines of code with a series of rapid clacks.

“One sec on that, Aiko,” said an unseen woman beyond the doorway. “I think he’s allergic to sulfonamides. I’ll check his file.”

With a stifled curse, Obito stabbed at the power button on the monitor and squeezed himself under the desk. The biohazard bags shifted under him, and he held his breath as they deflated and settled.

A pair of trouser-clad legs framed by a lab coat crossed his field of vision and approached the file cabinets. The drawer gave a shrill squeal as she pulled it open, and she tutted to herself.

The computer gave a musical chime just as someone else entered the office.

“Hey, did you forget to lock this when you were done?”

“The computer?”

Obito reached out and discreetly removed the stick from the USB. He held himself still when the bags crinkled with his movement.

“What? No, the file cabinet. There’s nothing important on the computer; this isn’t Konoha Medical Center.”

“You know, I might’ve heard that. A few times. Tonight.”

The drawer slammed shut, and the women laughed as they left the room.

Nine minutes.

Obito crawled out, stuck the flash drive back into the tower, and turned on the monitor. He drummed in impatience while he waited for it to load the prompt again. Moments later, his fingers flew across the keyboard, and the computer logged onto the desktop. He quickly located the shortcut for KonohaLabel.exe.

_Double click. File. Import template BH1. Wait, no, BH2. There we go._ He altered the timestamp to 15:32 and clicked through the windows. Somewhere behind him, the printer whirred as it received his request and began churning out twenty pages of sticker labels.

When it finished, he exited the software, locked the computer, and turned off the monitor. He tossed the sheets into the garbage bag and checked the hallway before backtracking his path—soon blocked by the elderly man, who had found his box of fuses.

Twelve minutes.

In a quick decision, he turned the corner to his right and headed for the lobby. With the power out, the camera at the front doors wouldn’t spot him, but the desk attendant was still a problem.

Obito glimpsed a small potted tree in a cubicle office. He shoved it over, shattering the pot. “Ow!”

“Is that you, Soshi?” called a masculine voice from the lobby. “What happened?”

“I tripped over something. I think I’m bleeding. Do you have a flashlight?”

“No, but I know where to find one. I’ll be right back, okay?”

He resumed whistling his nonsensical tune as he strolled out the front doors, and the hospital lights flicked on at his back. After replacing the screws on the vent cover to the laundry room, he dropped back down the maintenance hatch.

Twenty-three minutes later at Haruno’s apartment, he rattled the doorknob twice and knocked on the door. Sasori’s eyebrows lifted at the sight of the bulging garbage bag he plopped on the floor. If he had a smart comment, he kept it to himself.

“I’m back,” Obito sang, spinning in place on one foot. “Whew, that was tough. You wouldn’t _believe_ what I had to deal with. But no sleeping outside for Tobi tonight!”

A bleary-eyed Haruno peeked over the armrest of the couch and groaned, disappearing under her pillow.

“How’d Itachi take it?” he asked Sasori. He took a seat on the armrest and playfully dropped his hat on the girl. She mumbled something incomprehensible and squeezed her pillow tighter around her head.

“He was furious.”

“Hn, I bet. He’s just no fun. So, where’d you put it?”

“Ichiban in District Four.” The corners of Sasori’s mouth twitched. “Temporarily condemned for health-code violations.”

Obito couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, now it is!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started writing this, I jumped into it without really giving the plot much thought. The tone of this chapter contrasts Sakura's chapters to such a degree that I've now included some notes at the beginning of Chapter One to convey my thoughts on where I think this story is headed. Give it a skim if you'd like.  
> I've also removed, changed, and added tags now that I'm getting a better picture on this story as a whole. It's my modus operandi as a writer and a nihilist to include dark themes, bittersweet endings, and cold realities in everything I do, so I hope I haven't misled anyone with Sakura's seemingly optimistic outlook.
> 
> Sasori and Obito aren't good guys.
> 
>    
> But that's why we love them, right?  
> *smile*


End file.
